When the supreme egotist and ferocious walker George Borrow ascended Plynlimon
in 1854, he called at the Castell Dyffryn Inn to engage a guide, “a tall
athletic fellow, dressed in a brown coat, round bluff hat, corduroy
trowsers, linen leggings and highlows”. This splendid chap proved reluctant
to take the East Anglian writer to the source of the River Rheidol — “the
path, sir, as you see, is rather steep and dangerous”.

But Borrow, researching his classic travelogue Wild Wales, would not be
gainsaid. “It